On Meddling (Part 2 of 2) by Lewis Thomas

Lewis Thomas was a well known biologist and essayist who wrote the following piece on meddling with complex systems in 1974. This essay is divided into 2 blogs.  To read part 1 click here.

These were the classical examples of medical intervention in the prescientific days, and there can be no doubt that most of them did more harm than good, excepting perhaps the incantations.

With syphilis, of course, the problem now turns out to be simple. All you have to do, armed with the sure knowledge that the spirochete is the intervener, is to reach in carefully and eliminate this microorganism. If you do this quickly enough, before the whole system has been shaken to pieces, it will put itself right and the problem solves itself.

Things are undoubtedly more complicated in pathological social systems. There may be more than one meddler involved, maybe a whole host of them, maybe even a system of meddlers infiltrating all parts of the system you're trying to fix. If this is so, then the problem is that much harder, but it is still approachable, and soluble, once you've identified the fact of intervention.

It will be protested that I am setting up a new sort of straw demonology, postulating external causes for pathological events that are intrinsic. It is not in the nature of complex social systems to go wrong, all by themselves, without external cause? Look at overpopulation. Look at Calhoun's famous model, those crowded colonies of rats and their malignant social pathology, all due to their own skewed behavior. Not at all, is my answer. All you have to do is find the meddler, in this case Professor Calhoun himself, and the system will put itself right. The trouble with those rats is not the innate tendency of crowded rats to go wrong, but the scientists who took them out of the world at large and put them into too small a box.

I do not know who the Calhouns of New York City may be, but it seems to me a modest enough proposal that they be looked for, identified, and then neatly lifted out. Without them and their intervening, the system will work nicely. Not perfectly, perhaps, but livably enough.

We have a roster of diseases which medicine calls "idiopathic" meaning that we do not know what causes them. The list is much shorter than it used to be; a century ago, common infections like typhus fever and tuberculous meningitis were classed as idiopathic illnesses. Originally, when it first came into the language of medicine, the term had a different, highly theoretical meaning. It was assumed that most human diseases were intrinsic, due to inbuilt failures of one sort or another, things gone wrong with various internal humors. The word "idiopathic" was intended to mean, literally, a disease having its own origin, a primary disease without any external cause. The list of such disorders has become progressively shorter as medical science has advanced, especially within this century, and the meaning of the term has lost its doctrinal flavor; we use "idiopathic" now to indicate simply that the cause of a particular disease is unknown. Very likely, before we are finished with medical science, and with luck, we will have found that all varieties of disease are the result of one or another sort of meddling, and there will be no more idiopathic illness.

With time, and a lot more luck, things could turn out this way for the social sciences as well.

To view part 1 of this 2 part essay from 1974 click here.

On Meddling (Part 1 of 2) by Lewis Thomas

Lewis Thomas was a well known biologist and essayist who wrote the following piece in 1974.  In this essay, he reflects on the unintended consequences of trying to affect (or "meddle" with) any part of a complex system without first understanding the whole (as best you can).  Introduced to me by David Peter Stroh, it's a highly readable piece on systems thinking with indirect application to homelessness policy.

When you are confronted by any complex social system, such as an urban center or a hamster, with things about it that you're dissatisfied with and anxious to fix, you cannot just step in and set about fixing with much hope of helping. This realization is one of the sore discouragements of our century. Jay Forrester has demonstrated it mathematically, with his computer models of cities in which he makes clear that whatever you propose to do, based on common sense, will almost inevitably make matters worse rather than better. You cannot meddle with one part of a complex system from the outside without the almost certain risk of setting off disastrous events that you hadn't counted on in other, remote parts. If you want to fix something you are first obliged to understand, in detail the whole system, and for every large systems you can't do this without a very large computer. Even then, the safest course seems to be to stand by and wring hands, but not to touch.

Intervening is a way of causing trouble.

If this is true, it suggests a new approach to the problems of cities, from the point of view of experimental pathology: maybe some of the things that have gone wrong are the result of someone's efforts to be helpful.

It makes a much simpler kind of puzzle. Instead of trying to move in and change things around, try to reach in gingerly and simply extract the intervener.

The identification and extraction of isolated meddlers is the business of modern medicine, at least for the fixing of diseases caused by identifiable microorganisms. The analogy between a city undergoing disintegration and a diseased organism does not stretch the imagination too far. Take syphilis, for instance. In the old days of medicine, before the recognition of microbial disease mechanisms, a patient with advanced syphilis was a complex system gone wrong without any single, isolatable cause, and medicine's approach was, essentially, to meddle. The analogy becomes more spectacular if you begin imagining what would happen if we knew everything else about modern medicine with the single exception of microbial infection and the spirochete. We would be doing all sorts of things to intervene: new modifications of group psychotherapy to correct the flawed thinking of general paresis, transplanting hearts and aortas attached for cardiovascular lues, administering immunosuppressant drugs to reserve the autoimmune reactions in tabes, enucleating gummas from the liver, that sort of effort. We might even be wondering about the role of stress in this peculiar, "multifactorial," chronic disease, and there would be all kinds of suggestions for "holistic" approaches, ranging from their changes in the home environment to White House commissions on the role of air pollution. At an earlier time we would have been busy with bleeding, cupping, and purging, as indeed we once were. Or incantations, or shamanist fits of public ecstasy. Anything, in the hope of bringing about a change for the better in the whole body.

The "Meddling" image at top is by Mark Wilson.  If interested in T-shirts or hoodies with this design click here.

The Blame Game and Systems Thinking

A March 2011 Huffington Post article began with this line: "Recent budget cuts to a New York City program that helps families get out of homeless shelters and into apartments have sparked controversy, starting a blame game between the city and the state, and leaving the fate of 15,000 families and their homes up in the air."

One of the benefits of applying Systems Thinking to any situation is that it reduces blame.  Take the situation described in New York City.  The visible facts are listed in the line above.  Fifteen thousand families (or roughly 45,000 men, women and children) are now more likely to become homeless.  The city blames the state.  The state blames the city.  Many people blame the 45,000 people themselves. 
 
This could be any city in the U.S. There are unacceptable numbers of people of all ages living in cars, tents, sidewalks, abandoned buildings each year.  "It's homeless people's fault for being lazy," "It's the liberal government's fault for trying to throw money at the problem," "It's the conservatives' fault for not caring," "It's housing builders fault for building McMansions," and on and on.

Systems Dynamics expert, PJ Lamberson, says, "the psychology literature suggests a bias towards blaming people rather than the system."  Systems Thinking looks past blame at the forces at play in the system, not only at events (the actions and results that are most visible) but also the underlying patterns, structures, and beliefs that impact these results. So in the case of homelessness, the events which are most evident are homeless shelters at capacity, more people seen sleeping in parks, more unease by housed people, more frustration from business owners, etc.

By looking at the patterns and structures we see there are not enough unskilled jobs that supply a living wage as say a manufacturing economy did. We see that education prices have risen and many cannot afford the degrees required in a service/information economy.  We see there is little incentive for developers to build housing for the lowest income bracket and regulations that make it difficult to do so.  We see housing vouchers with an 8-10 year waiting lists because there are not enough vouchers to meet the demand and not enough units once a voucher is acquired.  Or for the lucky ones that get housing support, other life issues may plague them affecting their ability to stay housed.  Those are a mix of patterns and structures.

A systemic approach involves identifying (often mapping) the system to better see the interconnected forces at play, the effects of time delays, feedback loops, and unintended consequences.  Stakeholders may then see the complex system more clearly.  They see that structures within the system are causing the same results again and again.  With that view it is easier to get to work changing those structures instead of blaming the people that are caught up in it.

Click here for a related article article by Marilyn Paul that appeared in the System Thinker: "Moving From Blame to Accountabillity."

The photo, "B is for Blame," by stephbeff is used with permission.

Thinking systemically about homelessness: What is our system's purpose?

I've been thinking a lot about homelessness lately as a system, particularly studying systems dynamics, an approach to understanding complex systems. There are different ways to think about a system. Writer, teacher, Donella Meadows, says a system has three components: (1) parts, (2) interconnections, and (3) a purpose.

So if we are to examine all the forces, actions, structures, and attitudes that lead to high rates of homelessness as a "system," let's look first at the purpose of such a system in the ideal. I say the ideal, because I want to think here about the system of factors acting to prevent homelessness and create/support homes for all people in the U.S.*

For starters let's describe our purpose as something like, "to end homelessness in the U.S." That's a good start. But it's negative: ending not having a home. It's more inspiring to shoot for the creation of something, something positive. How do we put our purpose in positive terms? How about: "to create decent sustainable homes for all people in the United States." By sustainable I mean that people can live there for a very long time, not necessarily that it's green (although energy efficient would be great). How about, "decent homes all people can live in for a very long time." I specifically did not mention "home ownership" or "housing" or "American citizens." I want to keep it open to how people actually live in homes because I assume there will be some rental housing, some home ownership, some communal living, some boats, whatever. If people are happy in a community, have access to food, have good social networks and are sheltered from the weather, that is my hope - the type of home I'm less concerned with. And if someone is here illegally I still don't want them living in an alleyway...for their sake or mine.

Thinking systemically about any issue--and even determining a purpose--is a team sport. Because a system involves many people it takes collaboration to define the purpose, the vision for it, and even what the system is. I whipped the above purpose out alone on a laptop for this blog. Not the best process. There are hundreds of perspectives on this system I do not, could not, have. I need to share it with people that bring different perspectives of the system. No one person can have a view of the whole system at any one time, so collaboration is vital to capture those perspectives to get us closer to the truth of how it functions (or can function). Together we'll adjust, change, add, tweak, sleep on it, share, and adjust some more. We need to talk to homeless people, low income residents, market rate renters, teachers, housing developers, legislators, service providers, not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) folks, mainstream resource administrators, landlords, employers, public officials, health care providers/recipients, etc. I'd ask them, "What is the purpose you'd like to see for the system you're a part of that affects the creation of homes?"

We incorporate the wisdom of the group in the purpose statement. In a systemic process like this, getting the purpose statement right can take a day, a week, or longer. But it's vital and it's time well spent, like laying the foundation of a new house.

Next step (for next blog): identifying the parts of the system and their interconnections!

* My assumption here is that if we looked at the purpose of the actual system in place (as opposed to our ideal), it would not be to create homes for all people but rather to hide homelessness.  Maybe it's unintended but that is the purpose of the system that's created.  But, again, that's my assumption.

Photo is titled, "14 Purpose" by midoubleko and is used with permission.